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Political journalists wouldn't get away with these banalities
✒Watching royal "experts" yesterday I realised that there must be a law that prevents them from saying anything we don't already know. One even admitted to Sophie Raworth, "I've been rattling round in a vacuum of information for weeks."
I wondered if we political writers might try the same thing. "Prime ministers questions, and this is a huge, huge day for David Cameron, and a very proud day. You have to realise, Huw, that he is very much the prime minister, yet at the same time he is marvellously down to earth, and I'm told he often calls people by their first names. He is a public man, but at the same time intensely private …"
We'd be out on our ears in no time, yet these royal watchers make a fortune out of their fathomless ignorance.
✒Most sane people are bored to tears with the AV and anti-AV campaigns. Even those who intend to make a choice often haven't a clue yet which they prefer. But that hasn't stopped the two sides fighting a ferocious battle, accusing each other of outright lying and of accepting dodgy campaign contributions. The fighting has been particularly vicious inside the coalition, with cabinet colleagues speaking with detestation of each other.
I thought the point of AV was that by being fairer, it would make coalitions more frequent. So the pro-AV campaign boils down to this: you must pick AV because it means that we are much more likely to be joined in government with those lying, cheating, dishonest bastards we sit next to at the cabinet table. It's not quite as appealing as they hope, is it?
✒Funny how many people tell you that they know the names of all the celebrities who have taken out these superinjunctions. But there seems to be some disagreement. "I hear the footballer is X," you say. "No, everyone I know says it was Y," says your friend. "But I do know for certain that the TV presenter is A." "Really? I was definitely told it was B." "And the actor is C." "Really? C? Oh, my God …" It is all very confusing, which may be the idea.
✒To the Speaker's house in parliament to see Nicholas Soames give a brilliant talk about his grandfather, Winston Churchill. He took an unusual theme – that Churchill was not much of an orator. Many of his speeches, especially in the early days, were disastrous. If he ever attempted to busk it, things went quickly haywire. Faced with indifference or hostility, he would plough on regardless.
So he decided it was vital to spend as long as he needed preparing every speech – sometimes entire weeks, so that the thing was shaped and honed to perfection, then read verbatim. It worked, and the "blood, sweat, toil and tears" speech was the one that finally reconciled a dubious House of Commons to his premiership.
✒Brunggg – the phone rings and it is Barry Cryer, the nation's jokemaster general.
Chap gets talking to another chap in the pub. "I'm worried about my hearing," he says.
'Well, you're in luck," says the second chap. "My friends say that I have healing hands. Let me try it." So he cups his hands round the other fellow's ears and emits a low humming noise for two minutes. "Are you worried about your hearing now?" he asks.
"Fraid so," says the other man, "it's still next Wednesday."
✒I'm not a huge football fan, but we have Sky Sports, and I've noticed how often their featured matches end in draws, frequently goalless. I thought the idea of three points for a win and only one for a draw was supposed to end all that. Teams would throw caution to the winds to get that extra goal. I know there are lots of football fans with perhaps more leisure time than social skills who must have analysed all the matches played under the new scoring system and compared them with the seasons before. Could any of them share their statistics?
✒A good friend of mine lives about 20 minutes or so from Heathrow airport. Her suburban street is narrow and crowded, but still has unrestricted parking. She noticed that people were driving often long distances, parking for weeks in her street, taking a bus, tube or a taxi to the airport and saving themselves the extortionate car park charges – while making it almost impossible for residents to leave their cars within half a mile of their homes.
So she has a strategy. She waits a few days in which the car hasn't moved (to make sure it's not, say, grandparents babysitting), checks by the tax disc that the owners are from out of town, then carefully pours a bottle of Flora oil – 59p at most supermarkets – over the windscreen. It doesn't damage the car, but it takes weeks to get the screen and the wipers clear. "And, do you know," she says, "none of them ever comes back."
✒Labels still pour in: John Wolfson bought an orchid at Ikea: "Not suitable for consumption," it says on the tag. I liked the instruction leaflet from John Lewis telling how to set up their mesh bistro table. "Step one: Unfold the table. Step two: The table is unfolded."
Philip Purser kindly sent me a 1954 programme from the King's theatre, Edinburgh, for Agatha Christie's Spider's Web. A boxed warning advises: "There are no revolver shots in this play." And I loved the ad for the Washington DC branch of Madame Tussauds. "Meet all 44 presidents!" Washington to Obama. "All figures appear in wax," it says, presumably fending off lawsuits from people expecting, say, to see the real Abraham Lincoln.